Human rights activists protested against the death penalty, New Delhi, Oct. 10, 2008.

Prakash Singh/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Since Indian President Pranab Mukherjee came to power in July, he has turned down mercy pleas for at least 10 people who had been handed the death sentence. Two of these sentences – deaths by hanging of convicted terrorists – have been carried out.

There are also news reports that Mr. Mukherjee last week turned down the mercy pleas of another six people on death row. The president’s office and India’s home ministry declined to confirm this.

The question is why Mr. Mukherjee, who was finance minister before becoming president, is taking such a hardline stance on capital punishment. Or, to put another way: Why does India’s government, which Mr. Mukherjee represents as a titular head of state, want to push ahead with executions?

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Suhas Chakma, director of the Asian Centre for Human Rights, a Delhi-based think tank, says Mr. Mukherjee’s speedy review of mercy pleas is “rooted in political priorities,” and comes in response to criticism of poor state security after the 26/11 terror attack. Ajmal Kasab, the only surviving militant of the attack that killed over 160 people in Mumbai in 2008, was hanged in November.

“The government has been taking these decisions to project itself as dynamic and action-oriented before the upcoming 2014 general elections. It’s trying to shed the image that it has remained inactive even though there has been a quantum leap in crimes in the country,” says law professor Madabhushi Sridhar.

Mr. Mukherjee’s predecessor, Pratibha Patil, granted clemency to as many as 34 death row convicts.

India’s Chief Justice Altamas Kabir appears to be backing up the government’s actions. At a news conference on judicial reform at the weekend, Mr. Kabir said the government should continue to quickly decide on mercy pleas, some of which have been pending for three decades.

“If death penalty is to be awarded and it is there under the system, then the quicker things are done, the better it is for everybody,” said Mr. Kabir.

But some human rights activists are alarmed by the quickening pace of capital punishment in India, which until November had not carried out an execution since 2004.

“If the Supreme Court has been saying that there has to be no delay in disposing mercy petitions, as interim decisions, we would want the President to commute all convicts on a death row to a life sentence,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, the South Asia head of Human Rights Watch, a New York-based advocacy group.

Out of the 114 mercy pleas over nearly three decades, the government has commuted 46 people’s cases to life imprisonment from death. It has rejected the petitions of 106 people and nine are still pending.

Gurmeet Singh, one of the ten people whose mercy plea was rejected recently, has been on death row since 1986, when he was convicted of killing 13 members of his family. Mr. Mukherjee rejected his mercy plea in March.

India retains the death penalty, but since a 1983 ruling by the Supreme Court, that said it should only be used in the “rarest of rare cases,” it has been used sparingly.

“Keeping death row convicts in a limbo is against all norms,” says S. Chandrashekharan, director at South Asia Analysis Group, a Delhi-based think tank.

We only know about how many people have made mercy pleas because the Asian Centre of Human Rights made a request in February for information on the matter to India’s home ministry.

The ministry responded and the details were published by ACHR on its website. The website of the president’s office gave out details on mercy pleas for a while but the details have since been taken down.

The execution of Mr. Kasab, a Pakistani, was three months later followed by the decision to sentence to death Mohammad Afzal Guru for his involvement in a terror attack on India’s Parliament in 2001.

After Mr. Guru’s execution, many in India-controlled Kashmir, a region divided between India and Pakistan, believed he did not get a fair trial. Mr. Guru’s family members complained they hadn’t been informed of his execution ahead of time inflaming, tensions in Kashmir.

The execution of Mr. Kasab was the first since 2004 when a man was hanged for raping and murdering a teenage girl. That in itself was the first since 1995 when a Chennai serial killer was put to death.

Article 72 of the Indian Constitution empowers the President to grant pardon, suspend and commute the death sentence of convicts of death row. However, it makes no mention of a time-frame within which a mercy petition must be disposed.

The president’s office works in tandem with India’s home ministry. A mercy petition to commute a death sentence can be filed directly to the President’s Office or through the ministry, which gives its own recommendations. The rejection of a mercy petition can be reviewed by the court.

According to data released by the country’s National Crime Records Bureau, at the end of 2011, India had 477 convicts in its jails either waiting for execution or commutation of their death penalty into life imprisonment. This data remained unchanged even by the end of 2012.

The Italian government recently sought assurances from India that two marines who face charges of murder could not be punished with the death sentence under Indian law. The death penalty is banned in Italy.

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